"No Reservations" recap

I really liked the show. Really. It made me miss the city, made me want to go back.

My thoughts?

1. Chris Rose kicked off the first segment, and I got really excited. He did a voiceover, reading some of one of his columns about finding a working stoplight in the middle of nothing. He stopped and waited for it to turn green even though there was nobody around. My experience? Some of the stoplights still don't work. They get stuck on red on all four sides, and someone just has to go for it.

2. Mr. Rose took Mr. Bourdain to get a po-boy. Yum. They drank Abita. Yum. "I'm glad I don't live near here - I'd have a serious problem with these," Bourdain said. Me too.

3. The show opened wi a thguy mowing a lawn in the midst of devastation. The commentary was something to the effect of "isn't it nice that people care about such trivial matters despite everything else." From what I was told while I was there, if you don't mow, the government will do it for you, and then they'll stick you with a $600 bill.

4. Bourdain went on a tour of the Lower Ninth, and that footage still hits me hard. Really hard.

5. They did a good job of showing that people are coming back. That the restaurant industry has been coming back. But that it's not the way it was before the storm. They mentioned the fear that as people come back, the culture is going to be lost as rich white people buy up vacation homes, instead of the people who make the city what it is.

6. Bourdain went to Emeril's restaurant. "It's easy to leave. Not so easy to stay and rebuild it. That's what we're doing," Emeril said.

7. Bourdain said the people everywhere seem to be recovering from a "collective nervous breakdown." That sounds about right to me.

8. I really like the column that Chris Rose closed the show out with. The "Dear America" column. I liked it when I read it, and I liked it even more when I heard him read it.